Obi, Diri chide FG for neglecting flood victims

The Labour Party presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, has accused the Federal government of not showing compassion for victims of the flood menace that has killed hundreds of people, sacked communities and destroyed their farmlands.

Bayelsa State governor, Duoye Diri, similarly criticized the government for its seeming indifference to the plight of residents of the communities ravaged by floods waters.

Diri made this assertion on Thursday, during an interview on AriseTV.

According to the governor, no official from the Federal Government is yet to visit the sSate despite repeated calls and appeals.

Diri said: “We believe this is the time we needed the Federal government, as a father, and since a month now with the state under waters, I have made calls and appeals but no one FG official, in form of the President, Vice President or the minister is yet to visit us or deploy their federal might.

“The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs is yet to call the Bayelsa government to commiserate too.

“Nonetheless, we don’t want to over-flog the issue; so we are still appealing to them to help Bayelsa.”

Diri appealed for a holistic approach in tackling the environmental hazards, rather than neglect the states in the guise of issuing early warnings.

“This deluge, despite the warnings, is not something that a State government alone can handle. I had expected the FG to invite the affected states on a meeting in order to brainstorm permanent solutions out of this situation.

“The state does not have the resources to build dams, dykes or dredge the rivers; nothing can be done despite the warnings and the FG didn’t do anything about it.

“The current mandate by the President over resolving the situation ought to have been made before the deluge,” the governor noted.

On his part, Obi said: “We want a Nigeria that we will show patriotism by caring for the people in everything. Look at the flooding that has happened all over Nigeria. As far as I am concerned, the government of Nigeria has not responded adequately; they’ve not shown compassion.”

He continued, while on a sympathy visit Governor Samuel Ortom in Makurdi, Benue State.

“Leadership comes with compassion, it comes with listening, it comes with understanding. Even those people in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps how many people has the Federal Government come to visit. That is what you do, that is what shows you are committed,” he said.

In the last one month, Obi had visited flood-ravaged communities in Benue, Bayelsa and a few others to commiserate with victims.

He had tasked the Federal Government to be proactive in mitigating the effects of devastating floods across the country and declare an emergency.

Obi had also called on his counterparts in other parties to suspend their campaigns and join him to help victims of floods across states of the federation.

Since July, over three million people have been affected in 34 states in the worst flooding the country has seen in over a decade. At least 603 people have died and over 2,400 have been injured.

According to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), over 1.4 million people have been displaced due to the floods as of 24 October.

Reports so far indicate that over 300,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged. In addition to losing shelter, hundreds of thousands of people have had their livelihoods and access to food compromised. An estimated 569,251 hectares of farmland has been damaged, leaving households unable to cultivate their crops and resulting in loss of food source and income.

A report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs revealed that the number of people affected by widespread flooding across Nigeria has risen to over 3.2 million, with over 600 fatalities.

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